White Urban Bigotry
When wealthy white journalists Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman conceived their new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, they were most likely expecting bad reviews from conservative sources.
What they were probably not expecting were highly critical assessments from many on the Left, including many of the very political scientists they cite in their book. The criticism of Schaller and Waldman’s bigoted and shallow screed is well deserved. And if anything, it will only help former President Donald Trump get reelected.
Schaller and Waldman’s thesis is as simple as it is insulting. As Schaller told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, rural white people are
“the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic in the country.” Additionally, the book claims rural white people are “anti-democratic” and “most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful discourse.”
And, Schaller and Waldman claim, they “provide the receipts” to back up all their factual claims.
Not so fast, writes Nicholas Jacobs, a political science professor at Colby College. Jacobs, who Schaller and Waldman cite approvingly in the book, says his research shows urban voters are no more or less prone to violence than any other demographic.
“Our research found that just 27% of rural voters — including 23% of rural Trump voters — think that if the opposing candidate wins in November, people need to take drastic action in order to stop [Trump or Biden] from taking office,” Jacobs writes. “That’s the exact same proportion — 27% — as voters in urban and suburban areas who hold the same view.”
“Nor are rural voters more likely than urban voters to say the opposing party is a threat to America,” Jacobs continues. “While 38% of rural Trump voters strongly believe that about Democrats, 36% of nonrural Biden voters think that same thing about
Republicans.”
And that is just one of many glaring factual errors in Schaller and Waldman’s book. Writing in the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper, an environmental studies professor at Bates College, notes that other academics have said the book “used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations.” After doing his own fact-checking of Schaller and Waldman, Harper concludes that “Schaller and Waldman’s misuse of other scholars’ research is indefensible.”
Cataloging all of Schaller and Waldman’s fabrications would take an entire book, but as Harper notes, “This book will only further erode American confidence in the media and academia at a moment when faith in these institutions is already at an all-time low. And it will likely pour gasoline on rural Americans’ smoldering resentment, a resentment that is in no small part driven by the conviction that liberal elites both misunderstand and despise them. White Rural Rage provides a rather substantial piece of evidence to that score, and shows that rural folks’ suspicions are anything but fake news.”
Maybe Trump should do the authors a favor and pass out their book at his rallies this fall.